


For Display Only

by heidiamalia



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ensemble Cast, F/M, For Me, Slice of Life, for like a second, its that, landscaper/sex shop, slice of au life, very loose take on procedure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heidiamalia/pseuds/heidiamalia
Summary: It’s hard to tell at first who it is behind the overgrown shrubbery.He’s got a distractingly deep line of sweat trailing down his spine, though, when he comes into view and she finally spots the dark grayAnvil Landscapeslogo on his t-shirt.Karen takes a moment to appreciate her relief and the soft grunts from his effort in getting the boxwood roots out of the ground. She sips from the diner’s to-go cup in her hand to keep cool. “Hey, Frank.”-it's the landscaper/sex shop au
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 36
Kudos: 88





	For Display Only

**Author's Note:**

> istg i told myself it was gonna be short and its under 4k so i wanna say i did it?
> 
> anyway here is the new thing

Karen’s coming back from her lunch break when she spots a guy digging near the bushes in front of the store entrance. She nearly freezes at the curb. It’s hard to tell at first who it is behind the overgrown shrubbery. 

There’s only a minor alarm bell going off in her head about this, strangely enough. It’s broad daylight, for one, and this wouldn’t be the first time she’s spotted the neighborhood creep, Grotto, peering in the windows to catch a glimpse of someone shopping in the video section. Plus she’s carrying Elektra’s take-out order, and she’s not against the idea of chucking it at the dude to make him get the hell out of here. 

He’s got a distractingly deep line of sweat trailing down his spine, though, when he comes into view and she finally spots the dark gray  _ Anvil Landscapes _ logo on his t-shirt. 

Karen takes a moment to appreciate her relief and the soft grunts from his effort in getting the boxwood roots out of the ground. She sips from the diner’s to-go cup in her hand to keep cool. “Hey, Frank.”

“Hey.”

He’s assigned himself their storefront - that’s what Elektra says, anyway. The company he works for shares their little strip mall with a discount shoe store on one side and a barbershop on the other, and they’ve all agreed to let  _ Anvil _ send the bill when it comes to landscaping. Frank comes over about once a week to rip up any weeds or trim the hedge back or water the white rose bush she likes so much. 

"Gotta say, I thought you were Grotto for a second."

"Ahh," he shakes his head against the bush. "You know that piece of shit couldn't get by here without trampling through half of this."

"Yeah."

"Plus, Curt's already threatened to beat him with his prosthetic if he caught the guy in the area again."

"Oh, so he's got dibs?"

"This week, anyway." His tone is joking, but she knows he’s serious.

Karen’s usually already inside when he shows up. She’s usually watching the muscles stretch beneath his shirt from behind the tinted glass and fumbling around with the sample basket of flavored lubes on the counter to look busy when he comes in to have her sign the work order receipt. 

So this little overhaul on a Wednesday seems a bit out of place.

Now, he stumbles just a little to stand in the mound of black mulch he's prepared, and squints against the sun to get a look at her. He shakes any leftover dirt off from his garden gloves, and then points to a wheelbarrow he’s tucked just out of sight from the parking lot. “You got a second? Wanna get your opinion.”

When she heads back inside, she’s got to complete inventory on a shipment of butt plugs and then probably reorganize the novelty gift section again. “This about the bushes? You  _ know  _ I’ve killed my fair share of houseplants. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this to you before.” He laughs, and her grip tightens on the take-out bag at the sound. “Okay, sure,” she says when he waves her closer - deciding - wanting any chance she can get to watch him do his thing. “Yeah. What is it?”

“Gonna give you some edging. I’m uh... planning it all out -”

“Oh, my god,” she sputters quietly, swallowing her straw and biting down hard enough to feel the plastic crack between her teeth. Her mind is already racing down the gutter. He’s still talking.

“- wanna make the places a little more uniform from the road.” Flat, rough, geometric, and some scalloped stones are displayed in a few different colors within the wheelbarrow. Frank picks one up and motions to the  _ Anvil _ front door. “I’ve been fighting with Amy, you know, at reception. Keeps giving me different answers whenever she sees me.”

“I’m surprised she gave you any,” she says with a laugh, wordlessly handing him Elektra’s food and her soda to trade for the stone. The teenager is a bit tight-lipped when she’s not talking about something she wants, or engaged with the aquatic terrarium on her desk.

The granite in her hand is a little heavier than she expects, but it’s smooth to the touch. 

“Figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he mutters. 

Karen glances at her choices, at the pile of black mulch burying her shoes, and then back at him, where he’s absently scraping a fingernail over the waxy buildup on her soda cup. “The white,” she announces with finality, like she knows anything about what she’s talking about, and places the stone back in the wheelbarrow with the rest. “With this mulch, right? Or something close, at least. I dunno, Frank. It’s a big decision.”

“Black and white? That’s your final answer?”

“Is this a test?”

“No,” he shakes his head a little. “I was leaning towards that, too. We’ve got some color coming in, it’ll work.”

“Yeah?” 

She’s rewarded with a smile from him, bright and bashful and crinkling the skin around his eyes, and Karen feels her chest warm with a blush. “Yeah.”

-

So she’s like five minutes late from her lunch. 

Whatever.

Elektra is seemingly unfazed upon her return, only making grabby hands at the delivery bag before her retreat to the back office. “Have you asked that man out yet?”

“Were you spying on me?”

“I’ve nothing better to do right now,” Elektra admits unapologetically, and sighs, popping open the styrofoam and pulling out the pickle spear to chew on. Karen doesn’t mention the possibility of helping her do inventory. Her hand waves behind her, into the store, towards a far corner displaying leather crops. “There’s a couple of ladies digging around in the fishnets over in Costumes. They’re gonna be there for a bit.” Karen rolls her eyes and just adds it to the mental list of things to tidy up later. “So did you?”

“No.” She doesn’t like the way disappointment tastes. She wants to scrape it from her tongue with something sharp. 

Elektra frowns,  _ tsk tsk _ ing to herself before turning towards the window to watch Frank clear away some more roots. “He’s out there in the hot sun, you know, every week -”

“That’s  _ literally  _ his job -”

“- when will you let him water  _ your _ flowers, Karen?”

“That’s borderline,” she says, hearing the leftover ice in her soda cup rattle with the way she points it accusingly at her boss. It’s not really a warning, so she can already see a smile crack in the corner of her mouth. “Stop it.”

“I’m just saying! He’s not coming in here every week for  _ my _ opinions. Don’t I own the place?”

“You do,” Karen mutters, finding the wax buildup Frank had found earlier and digging her thumbnail into it for good measure.

“I can tell a man’s intent, you know. I know these things. He’s sweet on you,” she tells her matter-of-factly, pointing the remains of her pickle slice before letting it crunch between her teeth. “Since probably last year’s block party.”

“You really  _ don’t  _ have anything to do.”

Karen remembers the afternoon well enough. The start-of-summer cookout happens each year in the employee lot before sales kick up their own heat, their doors closing early for the event. 

She’d been sitting on one of the beach chairs Marci brought out from her display window with Elektra, while Luke from the barbershop started stacking bags of charcoal for the grill when she first met Frank. He’d been wrestling with something. A heavy  _ thunk  _ sound hit a concrete floor, and a short, echoing grunt of dissatisfaction followed.

She’d just met the whole team, actually.

"Is he still in there? It's the... damn picnic table," she heard Curtis say to no one, flipping a burger on the grill. 

He'd been explaining to the small group a bit earlier how they came up with the business idea for when they left the military, so they would still have something to do with their hands. How Billy could handle the finances, Curtis brought in some of the supply connections and the finesse, and Frank had the skills training from his father. 

"I told him Billy would be back soon to help but -"

“I’ll go,” she had offered. Billy had gone to pick up beer, claiming that Anvil was still the new kid on the playground, and therefore responsible for the first trip to the liquor store. Between the four businesses, she figured that would take some time.

The backroom of the landscaping company had been drastically changed since the last time she’d been on that side of the strip. The previous owners of the space had been a secondhand furniture store, and Karen remembered seeing rows of taped-up rugs lining the walls before being overwhelmed with the scent of dusty wooden armoires and tired couches. It seemed that  _ Anvil _ opted for a showroom-style approach, with examples of their work built along two walls. The rest was a jungle of plant life, different pathways, and lanterns. It smelled like freshly cut grass and a little bit of metal.

She’d spotted him on a platformed backyard scene nearest the front, on his knees, trying to unscrew a deep blue picnic table from the set and muttering softly about sticky walking stones and needing a beer. Something somewhere shifted and he gave a satisfied sound.

“Hey,” she called, instantly wincing at how the man’s broad shoulders jumped, the surprise evident in the way his fingers twitched against the wood. “Sorry. Curtis said… I’m here to help. Is it heavy?”

“Nah, not really,” he told her, dragging the table over in her direction. “Couple of the screws were stripped. Should be good now, though.” She backed up enough to give him space, watched as his boot kicked up a little dirt from the scene before the thing slid over the edge. It made her wonder how real the rest of the set actually was, after spotting the false backdoor and cardboard grill on the wall behind him. “Probably won’t keep it bolted down again, after this.”

“You do this often?” she asked him, amused, guiding the rest of the table to the ground. 

“The handyman thing or the stealing props thing?”

“This is too heavy to be a prop,” she had laughed, feeling the weight sway a little in her hands as they made their way and wiggled it through the building’s back entrance. 

“Yeah, maybe,” he said lightly. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” 

Back in the sunlight, she had caught the way his gaze followed the line of her, and found herself a chance to do the same once they set the table down closer to the party. He's ruggedly handsome, there was no denying that. His dark beard was cropped short, his hands strong and calloused. Her eyes had met his after another moment admiring his jawline. 

"Uh…"

She could hear the rumble of their landscaping pick-up pulling into the back lot, a sign that Billy had finally returned. 

He settled on the bench across from her. “I’m Frank,” he said, finally introducing himself. There was a little pink growing on the edge of his ears. 

She’d forgotten, too. “Karen,” she said, smiling.

“Can I get you a drink, Karen?”

Her eyes close at the memory, listening to Elektra laugh in the silence, like she's won an argument. The sound pulls her back to where she stands, leaning against the glass counter. "You guys were so cute."

"Go away."

“My fries are soggy, Karen,” she whines, moving back through the store with what is left of her lunch. Her voice echoes. “You’re getting the full extent of my wrath. Don’t forget the plugs.”

-

She’s pulling sale stickers down over in Fetish a week later when she first hears the snickering a couple aisles over. It’s a relatively normal sound in the store, especially when they come inside in packs - but the following  _ smacksmacksmack  _ and vocal noises reminiscent of  _ Star Wars _ lightsabers is not. 

“Those are for display only,” Karen says tiredly from her seat on the floor, shutting her eyes just for a second. It’s not the first time she’s said the words. Elektra had ordered the impressively sized dildos as part of a summer sale, and stuck a few of the unboxed ones just out of reach. Apparently, they were not far enough away for a pair of teenagers to do a dramatic retelling in what sounds like the center of the store. “Please put them back on the shelf you found them on,” she continues, yanking at another bright red  _ SALE! _ sticker hard enough to tear. 

With help from the wide security mirror nearby, she can’t see anyone near the glass cases anymore, but their skin colored silicone swords are left on top of a stack of novelty gifts in another section. The bell above the front door sings, and she figures she’s scared them off. 

One of her knees cracks a little when she stands, and she pulls the thick wad of old stickers off the back of her hand before she makes any moves to clean up.

“What are you doing?”

The sudden timbre of Frank’s voice is low and affronted, and at once Karen knows it’s not directed at her. 

“Don’t think I didn’t just see you fling that. Put it back. Hey -”

There’s a crash - a few metal clothes hangers, some boxes, at least one of the audible toys begins to moan - laughter, stumbling, and then two quick sets of feet dash through a different aisle. “Sorry, sir.”

“Wha - hey! Where’re your parents? Come clean this -”

“It’s fine,” she calls, waving a hand and surveying the mess as she gets closer, hearing the bell again. It's not, she can admit later, but it's the polite thing to say in this kind of situation. A rack of mesh pink nighties is on the floor over in Lingerie. They’ve jostled a few sets of vibrators off an endcap in their escape. There’s an explosion of sparkly thongs left in the fray of it. Karen can hear the automated but enthusiastic  _ yes, yes, oh oh, yes _ of a boxed something or other somewhere within the pile. 

She’s not sure why batteries are included, sometimes.

Frank runs a hand over his face before tossing his hat onto the counter and snagging up some of the fallen negligees on her way to lock the front door. Whoever else wants to come by can wait ten minutes, for all she cares. Elektra isn’t due back from wherever she went for another hour, too.

“What the hell is that?”

“If you find it before I do, just shake it,” Karen tells him over the noise. It’s just loud and distracting enough to keep her steady about seeing him move around in her space rather than stick to the cashier counter like he usually does when he stops in and speaks to her. He’s already across the room and picking up the two massive toys from where they were thrown and tucking them back behind the display cases. “People pull out the  _ try me _ tags all the time on these kinda things, and that usually works.”

She doesn’t bother to ask if he wants to leave. There’s an ease to his shoulders as he walks back over and works through the pile, and he’s told her more than once before that he’s a bit old-fashioned in that way. He likes to step in to where he could be needed. Likes being able to right a wrong. He  _ wants  _ to be here, she realizes, watching him roughly shake a vibrating box into submission, hearing the eager sounds coming from inside go quiet, hearing his soft and amused chuckle.

“Thank you.” She’s on her knees a little later to organize the endcap when she says it, an eye on him while he tries to match labels to price markers on the shelf in the aisle. 

“No need,” Frank mutters. He rocks back on his heels before settling onto the floor, finding a spot where he could tuck more product into. “Strangely enough, doing this feels way better than being on the phone, you know, arguing with our stone supplier.”

“Yeah? And how’s that going for you - the uh… the edging?” Instantly, she sees where her sex-shop-gutter brain takes her, knows now is  _ not the time. _ “No, no, I hear it -”

His laugh is light, though, and pink blooms around the nape of his neck. Fuck, she can’t stop staring at it. “I’m uh, working on it,” he tells her gruffly. “I mean, you know, if I work on the… if I’m doing yours - the strip, I mean, not, not you - yours -”

“Billy can’t assign you the crematorium’s lot,” she deduces, trying to save him from a spiral.

“We got the whole block. They keep asking for new designs.” He sets the last box on the shelf and leans back towards the opposite side of the aisle, turning his face to look at her. “Place gives me the creeps.”

“I get that.”

There’s a quiet, heavy moment between them where only Elektra’s store playlist fills the air. 

Frank clears his throat. His relaxed posture convinces her to ease into her own, resting against the edge of the aisle. “What uh… What do you think about tulips?”

“For the cremation place?”

“For… Y-yeah.” 

Karen considers the question only briefly. He’s asked her things like this before - and he must know by now that any idea or opinion of hers in regards to what he did for a living was moot - but still he asks. “They can be pretty.” He huffs a laugh under his breath, his chin lowering to his chest, the crinkles around his eyes deepening. “You know I’m not good at this.”

“That’s okay.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny, though,” she goes on, stretching her legs to tap and recenter a fleshlight box on the bottom shelf in her reach, “if you could find a weirdly shaped bonsai tree or something? Ooh, what about roses?”

“I already gave you roses.”

The realization of what he says must hit them both at the same time, because her breath catches and he shuts his eyes tight, wincing. She can feel a blush burn against her skin, hot and red and going absolutely nowhere when he chances another look her way.  _ Did he really just - _

"Shit, I didn't wanna admit that like that," he says after he recuperates. His fingers trace along the seam of his jeans like he can’t stop fidgeting and all she wants to do is hold them. "I mean... They were always yours."

Elektra will never let her live this down once she finds out. Either of them. Ever. 

“I love that rose bush,” she finally tells him. 

“Yeah.”

She flings a nearby lace thong at him from her spot on the floor. Another. Just for good measure, she thinks. Just to distract herself from his growing smile. 

He shoots one back, shaking his head. The sparkly purple fabric lands in her lap and Karen can’t help but laugh. “You know,” he says, laughing too, “I just kicked a couple of kids out of here for doing this.”

“I’m aware.”

\- 

Frank smells like sunlight and sweat when he presents the day’s work receipt in the midst of her completing a couple online orders. “Got you something.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Mmhm.”

He looks good today, she thinks, seeing his deepened tan and a little extra scruff on his cheek from the midday sun. But then again, there hasn’t been a day she didn’t think that. There's a bit of fresh dirt smudged along his forearms. Karen leans over the front counter and distractedly wipes at a streak of yellow pollen on his chest. She can do that now. He hums in response, a gentle vibration beneath her fingers.

"Hey."

"Hey."

His hand grasps at hers to hold for a moment before she watches him lift it to his mouth, kissing the inside of her wrist. The thoughts suddenly swimming through her skull are obscene at the innocent gesture and she wishes her lunch break would just come sooner. They've already planned to walk over to the diner together - and she wants to press herself against him in a booth and let his calloused fingers stain her cheeks when he kisses her again.

“Thanks for that,” she tells him, feeling a little breathless. 

Elektra’s voice carries from somewhere over by the condom wall, as if she’d been speaking to Karen all along. “- And can you see if we still have any more of those blue pecker pops, or did you eat them all?” 

“I don’t think they had any candy in this order,” she calls back, glancing quickly at the discarded clipboard and then back towards the rest of the store. “They want a toy cleaner spray and a medium red fox tail -”

“Yes but  _ I _ wanted one. Heaven only knows where you’ve been hiding them.”

“I’m a little busy, here, Boss. I can check in a minute.”

When no reply comes, Frank nods and reaches into the tool pouch on his hip. “I got you something else,” he mutters. “Reminded me of you - of what you said that one time.”

“You are full of surprises today.”

He places a tiny potted cactus on the counter. “I uh… I stole this off the showroom set Curt’s trying to redo this week for the new season,” he says. There’s one prominently tall tube at its center, with a couple prickly clusters at the base. _ “Mammillaria elongata.” _

Karen immediately understands why he nabbed it, but the look on her face must be pretty clear.  _ I’m bad at plants. _ She’s told him before. There’s a graveyard of discarded pots left out on the fire escape of her apartment building, and she knows the evidence is piling up. “I’ll need help,” she admits. “To take care of it.”

“You got me for that,” he says without hesitation. 

“Well, don’t let that be the only thing,” she tells him quietly, leaning in close and curling her fingers on his sleeve. Work be damned, she thinks. It’s a slow morning, anyway.

Frank kisses her then - taking the hint in stride. It’s easy and beautiful and  _ so  _ so simple. She wonders briefly about why she worried for so long about him and all of  _ this _ before he cups the back of her head to keep her steady. 

He smiles a little when they break, running a few fingers through hair that’s since escaped her low ponytail. “I’ll keep it here,” she says humorously, turning the cactus around in her hands and setting it beside the register. “I can grab one of the  _ display only _ signs for it or something.”

“You think that’ll stop someone from touching the pointy bits?”

“In  _ this  _ store? Unlikely.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he whispers against her mouth, pressing in for another kiss. “Should have chosen my words better. I gotta get back.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you at lunch.”

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr!


End file.
